


OurGlass

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Canon, Episode Related, Gap Filler, Season/Series 05, Short, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-19
Updated: 2008-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-27 14:15:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12082752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Sometimes the only thing worse than knowing the truth, is not knowing it. Gapfiller for 510.





	OurGlass

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

**_“Authorities fear there may be many injuries, possibly fatalities. Police say there is yet no word…”_ **

**__**For an instant, time stood still.

The second hand of his watch kept ticking away the tiny measures of his life, the glowing red ‘7’ of the car’s clock display warped seamlessly into an ‘8’.

But time stopped. A pallid stillness had suddenly stifled the passage of one moment into another.

For that instant of eternity, there was no sound, no sensation, no movement. And then-

_Justin_

His heart seized; contracting within his chest, a hard, merciless weight crushing it painfully, fear threatening to squeeze out the elixir that kept it beating.

That one word, a single soundless monolith, had exploded violently into his reverie, brutally ripping through the moment of shocked silence.

And there was no time; he had **no time**

_Please God…Justin…_

“Turn around.”

His words sounded absurdly calm to his own ears, a simple order with just the slightest edge of alarm. But inside he was screaming.

He wanted to fling himself out of the car and run as he’d never ran in his life, wanted to feel his desperation and panic in the searing pain of exhaustion, wanted to hear every pounding footstep that would bring him closer to the boy who kept his world turning and his heart beating and his sprit breathing.

But there was no time. He _had_ to know.

They were moving, turning around, racing back the way they’d come. The traffic passed so quickly on the other side of the tinted window that other cars’ headlights became streaks of luminescent red and yellow. But it was infinitely too slow.

All the images of Brian’s reality were being shattered by a silent wail of terror so piercing it stretched back years, tearing through the fabric of memory to smash through all the glass barriers he and Justin had ever erected between their two entities.

_Oh God…please…PLAESE_

The hourglass had been bolted to the table, the sand grains sliding silently, indifferently, through the hole at its neck which was getting larger and larger.

They cascaded down upon one another in an ever-growing aggregation of life already lived; a collection of moments that could never be recaptured, of minutes and hours and days lost forever.

That fleeting instant he could’ve so easily asked Justin to stay, told Justin that he would do anything to make him happy. Those few seconds in which he could’ve held on instead of letting go.

And all those soft, delicate moments when he could’ve whispered the three small words that had always been in every breath and every touch and every single syllable exchanged.

All now lost beyond retrieval.

Could Justin pass through that invisible barrier of ‘what is’ and ‘what has been’ with the ease of time itself?

_Please…don’t let anything happen to him…_

He had his cell phone in his hand, his fingers fighting for control against the panic that had spread to every single nerve ending. His body was on fire with it. The name flashed up on the small rectangular screen as he found the number on his speed dial.

The heart-held word burned into his vision like thin wisps of agonizing flame, the six letters so familiar in their unity they were no longer separate entities.

JUSTIN

He hit the button and held the phone to his ear, listening hard as each ring seemed to go on for an eternity. An eternity he didn’t have.

The sand grains were continuing to fall in their never-ending cascade through the passage of future, present, past.

When he heard the familiar voice reach his ear, a flash of electricity shot through his body, radiating from his heart and shooting down to every extremity and back in a fraction of a second. His heart erupted with joy, only to come crashing down again when his rational mind registered that he’d heard that exact voice, that exact tone, those exact words before.

It wasn’t Justin at all but just a recording, just his phantasmal voice saying simply ‘leave me a message’.

It was just a recorded memory. An instant in the past now eradicated… Justin could be dead and that voice would go on and on indifferently.

Brian swore, almost choking on his terrified words as he hit the speed dial again. And again. And again. He could no longer wait for all five rings but continued to punch the button repeatedly, as if each time would make the ring sound louder, more insistent, more frantic.

_Please Justin, pick up…Pick up and tell me you’re alive…It’s me…Please…_

Brian suddenly became aware that they were losing speed and he looked up through the darkened glass of the car’s tinted windscreen to see the apocalypse.

Time stopped again as the image was branded into his memory with everlasting white hot precision.

And then he was suddenly outside in the night with the cold air biting at his exposed skin, completely oblivious to any sensation but the horror penetrating every perceivable gap in his consciousness.

His panic multiplied exponentially as his alarm projected outwards, only to ricochet back at him in the frightened faces of men and woman. Faces that had all been so different but were now united in fear.

The frightened perplexity in their eyes reflected back his own naked, raw emotion, intermittently illuminated by the flood lights of the emergency vehicles as they split the darkness; red, blue and blinding white.

His ears were filled with the sound of crying, screaming and shouting, all overlain by the piercing wail of sirens. It was a terrible cacophony of human terror that went on and on.

The acrid smell of smoke and fire and fear filled his nostrils and he choked as it found its way past his lips and down into his throat. It tasted of death.

_Justin, where are you?...PLEASE, for fuck sake…_

His terrified, sweeping gaze fixed on a familiar face –Justin’s face, but once removed- and the word ‘Jennifer’ was instantly on his lips in a soft exhalation. He repeated it three times, more loudly on each occasion, rapidly closing the distance between himself and Justin’s mother, side-stepping people and objects in his desperation to get to her.

She would know.

There were frantic words exchanged between them, but the only phrase that registered for Brian sent him sprinting towards the narrow alleyway entrance he’d once known so well. He shoved and pushed his way into the middle of the inferno of confusion and fear.

Into the heart of darkness.

Inside the club it was way too hot, it was like an oven. It was quieter inside as well, but that was somehow infinitely more terrible than the cries and wails outside…It was the dark, heavy, oppressive silence of death.

“JUSTIN!” he screamed, his voice breaking on the name, his terrified cry echoing around the dark, cavernous enclosure. The words brought with it an inhalation of putrid air that made him choke and gasp, and he instinctively used his hands to cover his mouth and nose. “JUSTIN!”

He found Ted and a man he didn’t know lurking in the darkness, but the words the two friends exchanged were like oil on water. Only Ted’s silent response to his question could penetrate Brian’s mounting terror.

He knew somewhere deep in his heart that along with the steady trickling of sand grains through the passage of time, the probability of finding Justin alive and unharmed was escaping as well. It was sliding away from him, slipping through his fingers like water; unable to be retained, unable to be recaptured.

_Please God…if you let Justin be alright, I promise I’ll… I’ll…_

As he searched desperately through the smoky darkness, he saw images so terrible his brain refused to process them. Dispatched articles of clothing soaked in crimson blood so fresh it still glistened, people with injuries so appalling he had to turn away. And worst of all, the lifeless human corpses, the reality of Death.

To his horror, with every passing second he felt tiny pieces of his hope escape on their own accord, felt them falling away to be lost forever with the trickling sand grains though the present and into the irretrievable past.

In sheer terrified desperation, a single thought split through the shadows that had begun to engulf him.

_Justin…please don’t leave me…I LOVE YOU…_

A flash of brilliant white light erupted into the darkness, accompanied by the crackle and hiss of rouge electricity. Within that halo of artificial light, Brian’s hyposensitised eyes picked out a silhouette, a figure, a face.

Was it? Please God…

He didn’t call out or make any sound. He was terrified the apparition would dissipate; afraid it would fade back into the opaque darkness and again be lost to him forever.

He knew he wouldn’t believe in it until he’d touched, felt, held on to. He had to be sure it wasn’t an illusion conjured up by his desperate imagination…or that this wasn’t Justin’s ghost.

He reached out a hand, again terrified his fingers would close only around the air itself. But when his fingertips instead touched soft fabric, he had the strange sensation that he’d just brushed against the wings of an angel.

He crushed the material hard in his fist and when he pulled roughly, there was a real and solid weight that came with it.

The sand grains slowed in their descent as a pair of arms wrapped themselves around his neck, as he felt the hot breath of vitality against his throat, as he felt the softness of a familiar brush of hair against his cheek.

Time stopped again as the sheer, staggering, gut-wrenching relief broke over Brian so powerfully it took all his strength just to cling onto the edges of reality.

He had his arms wrapped tightly all the way around the warm, solid, living Justin, crushing him hard against his chest, against his heart.

And it was suddenly all so familiar; the exact size and feel of the body in his arms, the placement and pressure of Justin’s hands against his shoulder blades, the little noises the boy was making in the back of his throat.

For a few seconds Brian held on for dear life, knowing he would never again let go; would never again allow so many precious moments to escape and be lost to the complexities of circumstance.

The hourglass wobbled, tilted, and finally fell silently onto its side. And slowly, ever so slowly, it began to right itself again the other way up. Resetting the clock.

Those sand grains of his missed opportunities, of the chances he’d had but neglected to take- they were no longer in the past but were again waiting to fall through time.

Brian swore he would recapture them all and would turn them into stones of memory and mortar of love.

To build a castle for his prince.  



End file.
